Tuesday, 16 June 2015

With business, family and general red mist on other subjects being a diversion of late, it's taken me a while to get round to this, but it's very revealing. The EU released a study at the end of May entitled "Attitudes of Europeans towards tobacco and electronic cigarettes". You can read it in full here.

I'm sure you'll find your own points of interest, but there were some that struck me as particularly relevant right now. On the subject of tobacco packaging, for example, Europeans rated it as the least important factor when choosing what to smoke (page 38).

Despite tobacco control liars claiming that plain packaging will be a compelling disincentive for smokers, it appears that the public in the EU generally couldn't give much of an ant's fart about it. In fact, it gets worse if you factor in that tobacco controllers pretend the policy is designed to sway kids, teens and young adults (page 40).

"In 15 Member States, a lower proportion of young smokers and ex-smokers compared to smokers and ex-smokers overall say that the packaging is important."

Not only do those in the youngest age categories for this study attach no significance to tobacco packaging, but their give-a-shitness has declined since last time around even as the tobacco control industry has been ramping up the rhetoric. The only people, it would seem, who think that plain packaging is going to be an "effective" tobacco control policy are those whose salaries depend on lobbying for it.

Fancy that!

Further down (page 71), we find that the EU's Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) is in direct conflict with the choices Europeans are making to quit smoking.

Click to enlarge if you can't read it, but what the above shows is that e-cigs have leapt into third place of the most favoured ways of quitting smoking in the EU. That's from a base of absolutely nowhere in the last study. Meanwhile, cold turkey and help from a doctor are down from before, while Pharma patches and gum also seem to be in terminal decline and look set to be overtaken by vaping soon.

What's more, instead of focussing on pointless plain packaging to wean youths off smoking, perhaps the massed ranks of self-serving tobacco control troughers might instead take notice of the fact that e-cigs - according to Europeans surveyed - are exactly the product they should be encouraging (page 74).

"The younger the respondent, the more often they report having tried to quit using e-cigarettes: 20% of 15-24 year-olds have tried to use e-cigarettes to quit, compared with 5% of those aged 55+. Within that age group, respondents aged 15-17 are more likely to have used e-cigarettes to quit than 18-24 year-olds (24% vs. 19%)."

Incredible, then, that the EU and its natural parasites in tobacco control are not only in an obscene rush to deny harm reduction products to teen smokers, but also plan to render all currently well-performing products illegal - for all age groups - under their TPD which takes effect from 2016.

Now, are they really interested in seeing teens stop smoking, or not? You decide.

And on the e-cigs 'gateway theory' which is prompting incompetent governments to ban vaping globally - and is proving to be a desperate straw for entrenched salaried anti-smoking dinosaurs to clutch - the Eurobarometer study is quite clear (page 78).

"Almost one in twenty current smokers now use e-cigarettes or similar devices (4%), compared with 3% of ex-smokers and 0% of those who have never smoked."

Yes, 0%. That's what all the fuss is about, zero percent. Just to make it clear for any 'public health' types reading, that is zero as in nothing; zilch; non-existent. That's what the BMA and other scaremongers are spending their time fussing about - a fantasy.

In fact, the survey goes even further.

"No more than 1% of never-smokers in any country currently use e-cigarettes."

That's in all 28 member states! 25 of which couldn't find any interest amongst never smokers for e-cigs, with only Portugal, Poland and Lithuania registering an insignificant figure that struggled to round up to a pitiful 1%.

Now, considering the tobacco control industry is a tax-sponging Goliath throughout the EU - sucking up tax receipts as fast as they can say "new BMW for the Mrs please" - you'd at least expect them to be in tune with the attitudes, choices and pressure points of the people who live in the EU, wouldn't you?

5 comments:

Rojeans
said...

Last month I had the pleasure of sitting in a BBC radio station's studio alongside one Robin Ireland. Here he is being lambasted by Chris Snowdon http://www.hegroup.org.uk/media-resources blob:https%3A//www.youtube.com/ec96b82e-a826-434f-9a39-4531b0fd897b Robin, along with his chums at JMU had conducted a survey (which made it to the media) based on 16,000 kids. the survey revealed that a small percentage of 13-17 year olds were using e-cigs. when asked how many of these kids were actually vaping with nicotine, he revealed that the survey hadn't ascertained that aspect. Still, he recieved his research money, so that's alright init!

Tobacco Control is nothing more than a very expensive, tax payer £££ wasted, PC front for governments to look as though they're doing the right thing to curb smoking . Let's face it, what government is going to be happy about losing £billions in tobacco taxes (+ MSA Agreements in the US), with people living longer and to a usurper like ecigs, which are also a huge threat to the mighty pharmafia and their wealthy shareholders, all their pals in the health charities and huge numbers of research groups? Whilst the tobacco companies have the ability to compete and their ultimate aim, with eager assistance from all of the above, is clearly to own the ecigs monopoly - without the addictive qualities of MAOIs in cigarettes, ecigs are far easier to relinquish should vapers wish. Of course, it's in the interests of all these people and organisations to prevent kids taking up ecigs; not for their health, but to ensure new generations of smokers, to warrant the continuance of grants, to protect jobs and ensure tobacco taxes continue without too much hindrance. Governments need them all to justify ecig defacto bans for them and meanwhile,TC just play at tobacco control, without actually doing much harm; plain packaging shows just how desperate they are getting to come up with new ideas. If they were serious about killing smoking, they wouldn't allow many of the ingredients that go into machine made cigarettes and especially those MAOIs that are the main cause of strong addiction and given the many ethical studies available, they would all be supporting ecigs wholeheartedly. They all treat smokers and vapers like sh*t - that's what parasites do!